My Top 10 Business Success Tips

In November of this year, I will be the guest of the American Consulate in Poland in order to deliver a number of classes on entrepreneurship and business excellence at several universities in Kraków. Today, I received an email from a contact in Russia that is interested in possibly hosting a few business seminars in Moscow, and in that email, he asked me for a “bullet point” list of business tips to put in their newsletter to promote the events. So I sat down and tried to come up with the ten most important things I could offer, and I thought the list turned out pretty cool, so here it is.

John Spence’s Top 10 Ideas for Business Success

The quality of the people that you can get, grow, and keep on your team will determine the success of your business in the long run. Other companies can copy your products, distribution, and marketing and beat you on price, but if you have top talent that is loyal, engaged, and excited about working for your company, then you have a huge market advantage.

Whoever owns the “Voice Of the Customer” owns the marketplace. The company that listens to the customer the best and understands their needs, wants, fears, desires, and wishes – this company will be able to create a massive competitive advantage for itself.

One of the keys to success in any organization is having a clear, compelling, tightly focused and well-communicated vision and strategy for growth.

Culture = Cash. The number one factor for having highly engaged, satisfied, and loyal customers is having highly engaged, satisfied, and loyal employees. Remember this: the customer’s experience will never exceed the employee’s experience.

Ambiguity Breeds Mediocrity. If you want to create a culture with high levels of both personal and mutual accountability, it is essential that you establish clear, specific, measurable, and binary goals.

In every business, there are a handful of Moments Of Truth. These are the three, four, or five MOST important interactions with your customer on which you must deliver flawlessly, every single time for every single customer, if you want to grow a successful business.

To be successful in the future, the rate of internal innovation must exceed the rate of external innovation (II>EI). As a business, you have to innovate, create, strategize, and implement better than anyone you compete against in the marketplace. As an individual, this also means that you have to continuously improve every single day in order to out-innovate the people with whom you directly compete.

Don’t worry about the competition; instead, worry constantly about being better than you were yesterday and about absolutely delighting your customers. This is how you win in business.

You become what you focus on and like the people you spend time with. Whatever you fill your brain with and whomever you choose to spend your time with will determine what your life will look like a decade from now.

I truly welcome your additions to this list. It would be fun to get this list up to fifty or even one hundred business tips.

Comments

Love it, John. How about this…..”Get absolute clarity throughout the organization on the core things that matter most. Know the handful of things that if you get them right every time, your success is sure. Then focus.”

Absolutely on point, as always, John. I would add – “Communication is the oil that keeps the engine of organizations running smoothly. Make sure to communicate important messages repeatedly, and use numerous methods to do so, as people relate to and absorb information in different ways. There is no such thing as over-communication!”

Totally agreed Debbie – I can say from 20 years of experience that nearly every organization I have ever worked with has struggles with communication issues and the number one issue is usually lack of open, honest, transparent… over-communication – you are sooo right that there is No such thing as too much communication!!

I totally agreed with your points John. These are basic thumb role of any successful business. In short I can say that how you treat your customer whether its existing or news.
I would like to suggest one more point that asking customers about their Thoughts and Opinions on business and customer services.